by Walker, Rysa
“You know someone?” Jack says. “In 1966?”
“Family. Sort of. I haven’t actually met them yet. The place where they live has a weird name . . . hold on a sec.”
I’m glad to hear it’s not someone she’s close to, because she’s not thinking this through. “Madi, anyone connected to CHRONOS is gone. They never even existed. So if these people are descended from historians, I don’t think you’re going to find them.”
“They’re under CHRONOS keys.”
“Oh. You’re sure?”
She hesitates for a moment and shrugs. “As sure as I can be of anything right now, which is admittedly far from certain. The diary written by my great-great-grandmother Kate Pierce-Keller said that Kiernan and Kate Dunne took three keys back to 1912. Kate Dunne is the one that I mentioned to you before, Tyson, when I said that I knew of someone who was sort of a . . . duplicate, I guess, from another version of our timeline. Anyway, there’s a photo album of their family back in my grandfather’s library in Bethesda. They were under a CHRONOS field until they died, at which point the keys were returned to Kate—that is, to the version of Kate who is my ancestor. You, Rich, and Katherine were under keys and you still exist, so it seems more than likely that they do as well.” A few seconds more of searching in the diary and then she says, “Skane—Skaneateles, although I may be mangling that pronunciation. There’s a stable point in Seneca Falls, which is fairly close by. I’ll head there after I check on Alex and the others.”
“You should probably contact them prior to 1941,” Tyson says. “Otherwise, logistics could be a bit difficult.”
Jack frowns, clearly trying to puzzle something out. “But . . . will they have felt the shift yet? I mean, if she goes back to before it happens.”
I have to think about that one for a moment. “I honestly have no idea. If I had to guess, I’d say no. Maybe they’ll feel it about thirty-six hours before the critical event that flips the timeline? But again, I’m just guessing.”
“Too bad,” Jack says. “It will probably be easier for Madi to make her case if they know there’s been a major timeline alteration. Do you really think these people will be willing to take on a houseguest they don’t even know?”
Madi shrugs. “Only one way to find out.”
I pay the check, and we head toward the exit. The hostess who gave all of us the stink eye earlier is at the door. She tells us to enjoy the rest of our day in a bored, flat tone, but she’s still watching me in a way that almost makes me regret not wearing the blue contact lenses. I’m glad I won’t be staying long. The original 1966 was unfriendly enough to someone of mixed race, but this new version is several orders of magnitude worse.
Once we’re in the corridor leading out to the lobby, I pull a bundle of papers and a hotel key from my jacket pocket and hand them to Jack. “These are your IDs and a marriage license. Stop by the front desk and present the license to the clerk, otherwise the purity police aren’t going to let the two of you into the elevator together. Don’t wave the papers about too much. We’re lucky it’s the mid-sixties instead of a few years later when they shift to photo identification, but these still won’t hold up to much scrutiny. Oh, one more thing . . .” I reach into my pocket and give Madi a handful of temporary tattoos. “Each one of these lasts a few days, although you can remove them sooner with alcohol. They’ll save you a lot of hassle.”
Madi stares at the tiny pink and blue lotus flowers in her palm. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope. And there will almost certainly be a Book of Cyrus in the nightstand, right next to the Bible. If you guys aren’t up to speed on your early twenty-first-century cults, you might want to give it a quick skim.”
I check the time. “Rich and Katherine are going to be at the stable point in less than a minute. I need to get up there and fill them in. We’ll meet you at your place, Madi.”
She nods and they leave, taking a right toward the front desk. I turn left, heading for the steps that lead up to the stable point on the mezzanine. I’m directly in front of the fountain when two shots ring out in rapid succession. Something whizzes past my head, and the ducks, who were swimming happily only a moment before, issue a chorus of loud squawks. Their reaction time is only slightly faster than that of the humans in the lobby, who scream and scurry to take cover behind the sofas and chairs clustered around the room.
If I’d been walking just a bit faster, I’d probably have seen the sniper. Instead, the upper section of the fountain blocks my view—although not as much as it would have a few seconds earlier. A chunk is now missing from the top basin. That’s probably what zipped past my head, not a bullet.
Jack and Madi were not close enough to any large pieces of furniture to take cover, but they’re crouched in front of the registration desk. Neither of them seems to have been hit, but the guy just to Jack’s left wasn’t as lucky. He’s still conscious, but sprawled flat on the marble floor, with a rapidly widening bloodstain on the right shoulder of his shirt. I motion toward the back exit and mouth the word go, hoping Madi takes my meaning. The papers in Jack’s pocket would probably get them past hotel security, but they are not going to hold up under the full scrutiny of the national police, and the clerk is already dialing.
Madi grabs Jack’s arm, and they sprint toward the hallway near the elevator. I go in the opposite direction toward the stairs. Richard and Katherine are already there, standing at the railing. Through the balusters, I spot something that looks very much like a body on the floor in front of them. I glance over my shoulder to the lobby, where the two security guards are now huddled next to the injured man.
I take the stairs two at a time. When I reach the top, Richard is pulling Katherine toward the alcove that hides the stable point. She’s holding something about the size of a ballpoint pen. Her eyes are fixed on the shape next to the railing, which is indeed a body, sprawled on top of a rifle. A smoking hole at the center of the man’s shirt exposes a bloody crater with blackened edges beneath it. An odor that can only be burning flesh fills the air. I can see the purple glow of a CHRONOS medallion shining through the fabric of the dead man’s back pocket. So much for Alisa’s assumption that Saul would wait until the timer started.
My CHRONOS key is already out when I reach Katherine and Rich. “Give me your keys!” I press the back of my medallion to Richard’s and load the stable point Madi gave me. “Transfer it to Katherine. I have to get rid of the body.”
“You don’t have time!” Katherine says, nodding toward the lobby below. One of the two security officers is now heading this way, gun drawn.
“Just go! I’ll be right behind you.”
I crouch down, hoping the railing obscures my movement and gives me a bit of cover. The officer begins yelling for me to halt as my hand slips inside the man’s pocket and closes around the medallion. I roll away from the body, which vanishes the instant it’s outside the CHRONOS field. The rifle, however, doesn’t. The cop is now pounding up the stairs. So I do the only thing I can and pull up the location on my key. I can see Katherine and Rich standing inside a living room. Rich is still inside the stable point.
The officer is at the top of the stairs now, raising his gun, his finger on the trigger. If Richard doesn’t move, any jump I attempt to that time and place will fail. But I don’t have the second it would take to check.
Time for a leap of faith.
FROM A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME TRAVEL, 4TH ED (2302)
The proposal for the merger of the Chrono-Historical Research Organization (CHRO) and the Natural Observation Society (NOS) received approval from the International Temporal Security Council (ITSC) in 2247, following several years of negotiations and despite numerous objections from several member states. A member of the council from the African Union, who asked for anonymity, stated there was a strong sense that the United States would remove itself from the treaty if some accommodations were not made to allow for human historical research, and the council eventually determined it was better
to keep the United States within a weakened treaty rather than have it operating entirely outside the guidelines, which could easily result in increased global interest in acquiring and possibly exploiting the technology. The Natural Observation Society was gradually gaining strength within the US and had a cadre of human subjects ready to begin research as soon as the merger was green-lit. The conditions set by the ITSC were that the safeguards proposed by the NOS, including posttravel temporal monitoring, be strictly enforced, and that the number of historians authorized to travel in any given era be limited to thirty-six, less than half of the number originally proposed.
Initially, historians were restricted to the study of US history only, but this was waived after a decade with no apparent incidents. Historians were pulled into CHRONOS from allied countries, and the research gradually expanded to include all parts of the globe, although there is still a rather distinct North American bias to the research.
Despite approval of the merger and research program, several member states lodged objections in writing, noting that a number of the supposed safeguards were flawed. For example, one provision was that a council member of the ITSC be provided with a CHRONOS key so that they could monitor whether there were changes to the timeline. Some critics noted that having a single person or even a small number of individuals as monitors would leave the system susceptible to bribery. Others pointed out that while the medallion issued to the temporal-security monitor clearly does emit a temporal field, there is no guarantee that it is the same temporal field being used by CHRONOS.
∞11∞
MADI
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
AUGUST 21, 1966
The air is thick with the smell of diesel smoke, which billows from the exhaust of the long silver bus idling at the curb of the terminal. It looks old, and I doubt the inside smells any better, but I’ll be glad once Jack is inside and on the road. While I’m fairly certain we weren’t followed, standing out here in the open is making me nervous. I keep hearing the echo of that rifle in the lobby.
We got really lucky with the bus schedule. The first leg of Jack’s trip ends in Nashville, and that bus was due to depart just fifteen minutes after we arrived at the station. If we’d missed it, he’d have been hanging out here until late afternoon.
“I wish I could come with you,” I say. It’s true, even though I know thirty-four hours on a bus will be miserable, even without the eleven hours of layovers he’s stuck with due to scheduling gaps at his transfer points.
“Me, too,” he says. “But we barely had enough for a single ticket.”
He’s right. Between the cab fare to the bus station and the ticket to Geneva, New York, that we just purchased, we’re down to only six dollars and a handful of change from the money Tyson gave us at the hotel.
I sigh. “It’s probably for the best. I’ve got work to do. I need to polish up my powers of persuasion, otherwise this bus ride is going to be kind of pointless.”
“At least it’s getting me out of Memphis. I don’t know what happened up on the mezzanine, but I’m guessing it wasn’t good.”
That’s probably an understatement, based on Katherine’s expression a few seconds after she arrived at the stable point in my living room in 2136 Bethesda. I watched through the key to see if they made it, and Katherine seemed to be in shock. Rich looked stunned, as well, and Tyson arrived flat on his back a split second after Rich cleared the stable point. I was tempted to jump forward to find out exactly what happened, because I know Jack is curious. But he’ll have to stay that way until tomorrow evening. We have no clue how many times I’ll have to use this key over the next two days. Adding in jumps just to satisfy our curiosity seems like a bad idea when I don’t really know what my limits are.
“I’ll meet you at the station in Geneva tomorrow. That’s the closest station to Seneca Falls. If the Dunnes can’t or won’t take you in, we’ll find someplace else.”
The bus driver is about to close the door. I give Jack one last kiss, earning a look of stern disapproval from the driver. Apparently public displays of affection aren’t acceptable conduct in this timeline. Jack hurries up the stairs and makes his way to the middle of the bus, but there aren’t any window seats open, so I don’t know if he sees me waving as the smoke-belching beast pulls onto the street.
When the bus is out of sight, I go around the corner, set my key for twenty minutes prior to the time Tyson and the others will arrive, and blink. When I open my eyes, I’m back in the house in Bethesda. I pull in a deep breath of blessedly smoke-free air. The foyer is empty, so I go upstairs to the library, the one room where I can usually count on finding at least one person, since Alex rarely leaves his computers. And sure enough, he’s still there, despite his earlier assurance that he’d try to get some sleep.
“Jarvis,” I say as I enter the room, “set a timer for nineteen minutes. Then page Lorena and RJ and ask them to join me in the library.”
“Yes, mistress.”
Alex looks up. “A group meeting. Not good news, I’m guessing, since you don’t have Jack with you.”
“Jack’s okay, but no. It’s not good news.” I cross over to my great-grandfather’s desk on the far side of the library. The mere sight of the desk, piled high with books and notes from my research, triggers a twinge of you-should-be-working-on-your-thesis guilt. Which is stupid, given everything that’s currently going on, but then guilt generally isn’t rational. For all I know, my thesis advisor might not even exist in this new reality. Hell, Georgetown might not exist.
“Jarvis, how many people lived in Skaneateles, New York, in the 1930s? And how far is it from Seneca Falls?”
He corrects my pronunciation—it’s apparently skan-ee-AT-ah-less, rather than ska-NEAT-a-less. “The population in 1930 was 4,725. The town is approximately twenty miles from Seneca Falls.”
I yank open the top drawer of the desk. An envelope of 1930s-era cash is stashed inside. I grab a few of the bills and put the money in my bag, along with the Log of Stable Points.
“Is public transportation between those two cities easily accessible in 1930?”
There’s a short delay, and then Jarvis says, “I’m sorry. Public-transportation data for that time period is unavailable.”
“I’m going to take that as a no, then.” I’m not really confident enough in my knowledge of that era to risk wandering around asking for directions, so I start scanning the shelves, looking for the photo album I spotted a week or so back.
When I first saw this library seven months ago, I’d thought that the soft amber glow inside the bookshelves that line these walls was designed to protect the hundreds of old books in the collection from harsh lighting. That was before I found the CHRONOS key and realized that the glow from the shelves is the same shade as the medallion is for me. The temporal shield that surrounds the house and most of the yard emanates from this room. Alex says that he’s pretty sure the library was once the only protected area, and whoever created the field around the house just expanded on what was here.
I locate the photo album two sections over and flip through. Sure enough, there’s an article from 1923 a few pages in, with a picture of Kate Dunne taking part in a Seneca Falls pageant celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first women’s rights convention. The article says that the women marched from the tiny church where the Seneca Falls Declaration was signed to the larger Trinity Episcopal Church on the banks of Van Cleef Lake for the rest of the ceremony.
That was definitely the article I remembered seeing, but I was hoping it would be a bit closer to the date of the time shift, so I keep flipping through the pages. The next image is dated 5/18/29 and shows a pretty, dark-haired girl in a cap and gown in front of a sign that reads Skaneateles Central High School. Two pages over, there’s one of Kiernan Dunne and his two sons, all three drenched to the bone, stacking sandbags along the shore of that same church twelve years after the suffrage pageant. Preparing for Floods. Trinity Church. 6/6/35.
Bi
ngo.
RJ clears his throat at the doorway. “Is something wrong? Lorena’s trying to get Yun Hee down for a nap.”
“It’s okay. Might be better to have you break the news to her anyway.”
“That doesn’t sound good in the slightest,” he says genially, sinking down onto the couch. “Jack’s okay, isn’t he?”
“Last I saw him, yes. Someone fired at us in the lobby of the hotel, but they missed. We were able to slip out the back, and Jack is now on a bus from Memphis to upstate New York. I need to head to that area circa 1935 so that I can convince Kate and Kiernan Dunne to take him in thirty-one years later. Three historians from CHRONOS are going to arrive in our living room in about fifteen minutes, and the Anomalies Machine is going to start going crazy at some point between now and then.”
I launch into a more detailed explanation, and about halfway through, both Alex and RJ wince. A second later, the display connected to the ancient computer in the corner blinks on. I don’t feel the jolt again, so apparently Tyson is correct about it only hitting you once.
Alex curses, shoving the virtual displays aside. We join him at the Anomalies Machine, watching as lines of data scroll upward so quickly that it’s hard to even tell they’re composed of words.
“Can that computer handle this much data?” RJ asks. “It’s even older than the one Grandma had in her attic.”
Alex nods. “I made some adjustments. It’s feeding into the main system now. I was going to disconnect the old display, but I didn’t have time. Were they able to figure out what was changed before CHRONOS was erased?”
“Some of it. You can ask them yourself. They’ll be here shortly.”
“Not Katherine, though . . . right?”
I’m in complete sympathy with the look of alarm in his eyes. The idea of Katherine being here, in a house she purchased 130-some years ago, when she was about five decades older than the woman who will land in my living room in a few minutes, feels inherently wrong to me, as well. I’m quite certain we’re setting ourselves up for a whole new batch of problems.
